The Last Kiss: B+
The Last Kiss is a wonderfully ordinary relationship drama/comedy that shies away from slow, silence filled grief meditations as much as it avoids focusing on middle aged relationship neurosis. No, the people who populate The Last Kiss are perfectly normal, so normal in fact that many seem like cut and paste characters from any mundane relationship movie or television sitcom, but the script is so sharp, the actors so good and the movie so energetic that it infuses these paper thin people with life.
Writer/director Gabriele Muccino centers the story on an unmarried couple, Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) and Guilia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) who are about to have a baby, but
The Last Kiss drifts around between their friends and relatives as well. At a wedding Carlo meets a gorgeous high school student (Martina Stella) who firmly observes that all relationships seem to be in some sort of crisis, which is perfect summation of gist of
The Last Kiss. Carlo finds his time with Guilia growing monotonous so he drifts towards the young girl, Guili’s mother plans to leave her husband after years of a marriage filled with tedium, Carlos’ friends range from a man planning on touring the globe to get over a women, to a new father who is getting fed up with his unmarried girlfriend. Much like
Magnoliathe first half hour or so of the film is a long music filled montage that throws the viewer in the middle of relationships either already breaking down or on the brink of it. Superb steady cam work and a lively score hides most the characters’ lack of depth and Ms. Muccino’s loud, very funny script makes interaction between these people, who are all on the verge of some sort of nervous breakdown, ring true. In theory we have seen all these people and what they are going through before, but the flawless ensemble cast spits Muccino’s lines like their lives depended on it, and their passion and strong talent ignites the film as a whole. And there must be some form of black magic at work, for how can Ms. Muccino and her cast make
The Last Kiss so funny without making it a comedy? It is a mystery, as the characters clash, take a step back and clash again their crisis spill out little bits of humor all over the place, and the more yelling there is (and there is a lot) the funnier it gets. The lack of profound insight in the film is covered up nicely by its wit.
The Last Kiss suffers mainly from being out of balance, where most of the stories are told from the male side, where most of the relationships are between late twenty somethings, and where Guilia and Carlos’s narrative fills some of the picture but not all of it. There are glimpses of the female side (mainly through Guilia and her mother and short aftermath scenes of some of the other girls), just as there are glimpses outside the core age group (again mainly with Guilia’s mother); but Muccino does not take as much time to explore the depth of the other sex, the other age, or the other side characters in the film as she does to develop Carlo and Guilia’s story. For the amount of screen time they get it is a shame that all of Carlos’ friends remain generally unknown (either as question marks or thinly written characters depending on how you look at it) despite the character arcs Muccino tries to give them (one finds he is unsure of his true feelings, one gets tired of sleeping with a different girl every night, and one reexamines his life after his father dies), and that Guilia's mother is given such a large part of the story when her character revelation is barely shown on screen.
And yet
The Last Kiss flows so smoothly (thanks to an impeccable use of the steady cam), cuts so sharply (thanks to some of the most fun dialogue this year), and is so filled with energy (thanks to a cast that never stops impressing and the kind of always-on-the-brink-of-climaxing music that made the near three hour
Magnolia border on aggravating) that it blazes over what would normally be considered fatal cinematic flaws. Simply put the film is a blast to watch and the whole movie has the kind of furious kinetic energy that overwhelms critical perceptions and leaves a smile on the face at the end of it (albeit a smile that wavers a bit the next day when the filmmaking is put under a more focused scrutiny).
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